November 6 - 'Staff of life' wavers under weight of humanity

Article:
Signs Of The
Last Times|

Yields are not keeping up with a world growing hungrier. Crops are stunted in a world grown warmer. A devastating fungus, a wheat "rust," is spreading out of Africa, a grave threat to the food plant that covers more of the planet's surface than any other.

In Chicago, London and other money centers, the wheat market is so roiled by bad news and speculators that rising prices may put bread out of reach for millions more of the world's poor.

The future of wheat — in many ways the future of food — was the subject of an emergency meeting of agricultural officials who flew to Rome from around the world in late September, worried over skyrocketing prices.

"You will probably have a longer period of high prices, a feature we should get used to," FAO economist Abdolreza Abbassian, secretary of the grain group, told The Associated Press.

They have big plans: A year-old global research consortium has set a goal of boosting wheat yields by 50 percent in 20 to 25 years. It will mean "redesigning" the wheat plant. They're consulting structural engineers, for example, about how a stem can support a fatter head of grain. Getting that fatter head may require genetic modification, the engineering of life forms that still arouses public opposition, slowing current research on "GM wheat." Wheat physiologist Reynolds envisions, for example, possibly transferring a gene from rice to give wheat more heat tolerance.

"With the financial crisis, people and countries are becoming more selfish and shortsighted," he said. "We're very fearful about our future with these traditional donors. And the consequences are in the future, when food becomes scarce."

Understand The Times is an independent non-profit organization in
Canada and the United States.Understand The
Times is not affiliated or dependent upon any other organization or
denomination.
Understand The Times is accountable to a board of directors in the
United States and Canada and accountable,
first of all, to Jesus Christ and His
word.